University of Virginia Library

THE DAY OF THE CYCLONE.
By Octave Thanet.

IT was a warm day. Perhaps but for that it might not have happened, since Captain Barris is a most temperate man. Unluckily the day was warm, very warm, and Archy was tired with a long ride in the "accommodation train:" and a vision of a glass of beer — cool, foaming, pleasantly stinging — rose before him. He had just been stationed at Rock Island Arsenal, and all his knowledge of the town of Grinnell was the fact that he had inherited some property within its limits. Quite innocently, therefore, he stared about him for some sign of refreshment.

The street was like a hundred rural streets in the West — straight, broad, and shaded by young trees.

All the wooden cottages might have been designed by the same prosaic architect.

Some of them looked a little rusty; many of them shone with new paint. They all had trim gardens in front, oases of verdure in the midst of the dust. Between the dwellings, every now and then, there would come a great gap of untilled fields where no mower disturbed the riotous plantain, and burdock and jimson weeds held a kind of squalid revelry over a heap of tin cans. The contrast between this unkempt domain and the tidiness of the dwellings was queer; but it was as Western as the sea of prairie around the town, or the fierce sun above.

No quiver in the hot air blurred the shadows of the maple leaves on the side-walks. A few farmers' wagons crawled tediously through the glare. Just ahead of Archy was the solitary other footman in sight. He was a big man, thin, but built on the large and sinewy plan. Though it was so warm, his gray head was covered with a soft black felt hat, and he wore the heaviest of boots. To make matters more equal, he carried his black coat on his arm and had unbuttoned his old-fashioned waistcoat. He walked slowly, with the round shoulders and uneven gait of a man accustomed to watch the ground.

So little did Archy know of the interior of Iowa that he marched up to this old man and asked where he could get a glass of beer.

His answer was the view of a gaunt and weather-beaten visage and a portentous frown.

"Kin I tell you where ye kin get a glass of beer?" repeated the man, who frowned as the keen gray eyes under the beetling brows took in Archy's elegant figure, from the white Derby hat of the period to his immaculate gaiters. "No, young man, I cayn't; and I'd advise you to quit huntin' up beer, or ye won't wear sich good clo'se long. Anyhow, ye won't find no beer in Grinnell."

"What's the trouble with Grinnell?"

"The trouble is, it's a prohibition town; and prohibition in Grinnell does prohibit. There ain't a saloon in the place. Ye cayn't git a drop of intoxicatin' liquor, not a drop — "

Here his underjaw fell, his eyeballs fixed themselves in a dismal stare; and the didactic forefinger, which had been sawing the air, was paralyzed midway, so that it pointed straight at the red-faced man reeling round the corner. The look and the swagger of him were unmistakable.

"Perhaps he could tell me," said Archy.

He made the old man a very fine bow and walked away, smiling.

But when he returned to Grinnell, a year later, he was more serious. "I daresay Rachel's father is another of the same sort," he reflected; "if not — by Jove, that would be too much, though!"

He laughed a little lugubriously. Rachel was beautiful enough, and what was better, sweet and good enough to justify any man's passion; and he was as much in love as a man can well be; but he thought of her people with a qualm.

"I grant that Rachel is an angel" — so his mother had talked — "and the angels are above social distinctions; but her father and mother?"

"Her mother is presumedly an angel, too," Archy had replied, "she has been dead these ten years."

"Well, there are her father and two brothers. And she told me that there was a cousin visiting them whom her father was going to marry. She comes from Vermont; but I don't believe the boys have ever been out of Grinnell in their lives. You can't judge these people by the Ramsays, Archy; the Ramsays have been everywhere. It was only a freak of Mr. Ramsay sending Ethel to Grinnell. Archy, I feel sure her people are impossible!"

"I shan't marry her people," Archy had said, lightly.

But now, with some misgivings, he scanned the elderly men coming home to their midday dinners, anyone of whom might be her father. Sedate, prosperous-looking men they were, very like men of their years in a New England village, except for a slight Western negligence of dress.

"Ramsay is right," mused Archy; "Grinnell is a Puritan colony in the prairie."

He was in the College campus, now. The ugly, square stone building he judged to be the college hall, and from the number of heads at the windows he surmised that a tall brick building was a kind of dormitory. The pretty cottages about must be the professors' houses, and the young men and maidens among the trees must be the students. He thought that the youths had rather a rustic air, but some of the girls were admirably pretty, and the ripple of their gayety spread to the faces of the passers-by.

"But not one of them," was his comment, "can compare with Rachel — Hallo! here's the house."

A door-plate left him in no doubt. The house was of wood, of two stories, and had two bay-windows and a piazza. It was painted gray, and the blinds were red. There was a garden before it full of rose-bushes, and the roses were in bloom. Archy grew a little dizzy; he had not seen Rachel for a week; he would see her in a moment, and being a modest, true-hearted young fellow, very much in love, his soul abased itself before this delicate and radiant creature whom he was daring to make his own.

"My white rose," murmured the lover, "I am not worthy, but I will try."

"Cayn't ye make nobuddy hear ye? That gong's intended to ring," remarked a harsh, deep voice at his elbow. An old man had come around a bay-window to find Archy smiling tenderly at the door-plate. It was the same old man whom he had met before.

"I am looking for Mr. Jared Meadowes," said Archy, whose heart sank down to his boots.

"Well, you've found him."

Inwardly Archy groaned, outwardly he bowed and said, "I am Captain Barris."

"Walk in," said Meadowes, throwing the door open, but with no gleam of cordiality on his face.

He strode on before, Archy thinking how familiar his back looked, for he was in his shirt-sleeves. He had also dispensed with shoes, and his white socks glimmered in the obscurity of the hall. Archy followed him into a pretty room, and took the chair pushed forward. The old man seated himself opposite, planted his hands on his knees in the fashion of a rustic photograph, and proceeded to subject the young officer to a grim and leisurely scrutiny. Decidedly it was not a promising welcome.

However, one cannot sit indefinitely staring at one's prospective father-in-law, so Archy cleared his throat and began. He presumed Mr. Meadowes knew the object of his visit. He had met Miss Meadowes at her friend Miss Ramsay's.

"Six weeks ago," interrupted the old man, "and now ye want to marry her."

A trifle disconcerted Archy next tried to explain his position and prospects. "He was in the army, stationed at Rock Island Arsenal. The quarters there —"

"That's all right," said the old man, "I've been on the Island. Big thing. Big arsenal. But I want to hear 'bout you."

"Oh, I? I am twenty-eight years of age. My father was in the army, General Barris. He was killed in the war. It is rather an army family. My mother

is a Massachusetts woman. She was a Miss Saltonstall."

"Dependent on you?"

"She has about half a million dollars from her father. I have one sister, who is married and lives in New York. She is not dependent on me either. My mother lives with me. She — everybody thinks my mother a charming woman."

"But Rachel ain't goin' to marry your mother. Cayn't seem to git ye to talk 'bout yourself. Ramsay gives you a fine send off in his letter; but things don't strike him and I just the same. I guess you're a desirable husband as the world looks at things; but I ain't one of the world's people. Never was. You ain't the kind of husband I'd pick out for my daughter. Nor yours ain't the kind of life I'd choose for her. But if you're a good man, and likely to make her happy, I won't stand in the way. It's nature, I s'pose. I took her mother off to Kansas, 'way from her folks, an' now you want to take her, an' she's glad to go; but 'tain't nature I should be glad to have her. Well, now, s'posin' you stop to dinner an' give me a chance to sorter size ye up; an' if I like the look o' ye I'll go down to Rock Island, and if you're satisfactory all 'round, it will be time to talk of marrying."

"I shall wait until after dinner, then," said Archy, smiling.

No answering smile relaxed the other's iron features as he replied: "All right. Make yourself to home. I'll go tell the folks."

He left Archy in a frame of mind about equally compounded of irritation, amusement, and consternation. The young man could not help laughing as he pictured his mother's horror when she should see Meadowes. "Well, anyhow, I don't blame him for not wanting to give up Rachel," he thought, gazing about the room for some trace of this one sweet presence. He rightly judged the soft hues of the walls and draperies, and the pretty feminine fancies of wicker-work and ribbon to be of her choosing; but he gave old Meadowes full credit for the plaster group representing the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and for a huge, pale engraving of Lincoln in the bosom of his family. Above the mantel-piece hung a water-color portrait, sumptuously framed, with a jar of roses before it like an offering before a shrine. Plainly, it was the important object in the room. The portrait was a man's head. The features, the brows and the contour of the face, which was clean shaven, reminded Archy of those multitudinous busts in the Vatican. Like them, also, was the singularly calm and determined expression. But the blue eyes were mild, sad, and dreamy. Archy had risen for a nearer view when the inmates of the house appeared. They were Rachel, her future stepmother, and her two brothers. The future stepmother was introduced as Miss Baker. She resembled Rachel in figure and carriage, rather than in features or coloring; and Archy had a fancy that her gentle, faded face looked a good deal as the late Mrs. Meadowes's might have done at the age of — say forty. But, naturally, his glance only lingered a polite instant before it sought Rachel to the wild flowers growing in the clefts of New England rocks. Her extraordinary beauty was of that fragile type which has a pathos in its very charm. Really, Rachel was both healthy and happy, and her father loved to boast of her prowess in mathematics at the Grinnell College; yet whoever looked on her exquisite, pale face, with its wistful eyes and sensitive mouth, felt an involuntary sympathy, well enough interpreted by Archy's mother's remark: "That is the kind of girl who can break her heart!" She was a creature to whom one is gentle by instinct. Nevertheless, such creatures have their own strength. She was graceful because she could not help it, and had a natural sense of beauty. Archy felt a fond pride as the lovely shape approached. Nothing more than a white frock and some red roses; but how they suited her.

By this time he was back in his chair, beaming with great friendliness upon the two youths, Ossawatomie ("Is he named for an Indian chief?" wondered Archy) and Jared. They were twin brothers, two years younger than Rachel; both tall, slim, and shy; having their sister's fascinating combination of bronze hair and dark-brown eyes, but with features

which were a softened copy of their father's. Jared did not open his lips; but Ossawatomie made some timid advances. To help on the lagging talk Archy spoke of the water-color. "It was painted on East," said Ossawatomie, "from a daguerreotype. It is John Brown."

"The Queen's John Brown, or John Brown's body?" Archy asked, with his fatal levity.

"That, sir," said a deep voice, "is John Brown of Ossawatomie, the noblest man that ever died for liberty!"

Archy had not seen him approach, and who can hear the footfall of socks? There he stood in the doorway, fore-finger uplifted, as grim and dark a figure as ever sent a witch to the gallows. "Well, sir," he continued, "what is your opinion of him?"

"He was a hero, certainly," said Archy, "whatever his mistakes."

"What mistakes?"

"Well, Harper's Ferry. And that Missouri affair where they dragged men out of their cabins and shot them in the hearing of their wives and children —"

The old man interrupted him as usual: "Brown wasn't on that raid. But that ain't sayin' he condemned it; he didn't. And you needn't waste much pity on them men. They had blood on their own hands, every one of them; they had murdered Free State men; and they were judged, condemned, and killed for it, as they had ought to be. That's all there is to that affair. Those border ruffians used to ride over into Kansas, and slay, and steal, and burn. They'd come over and vote, and make our laws for us. Then they'd shoot us 'cause we objected. Didn't ye never hear of the sack of Lawrence? A neighbor of mine was shot down, right before his wife, by three men. Three to one, those were their odds. I know all about it, for I was one of Brown's men. I was only a stripling, but I had the luck to be in four fights, and I got a bullet in my leg that, like's not, saved my life, for else I'd a gone off with Brown to Harper's Ferry, so I guess I owe one good turn to a border ruffian. But, I tell you, I didn't thank him for it when I read in the papers how those he counted on failed him, and he was trapped and lay wounded in prison, and then how he — died. I'd lay on my bed and cry, 'cause I couldn't be there and fight it out with him. Say, sir, you that call Harper's Ferry a mistake, say, did you ever read the letters he wrote when he was in prison in Charleston?"

"No, I don't think I have; I don't remember them," said Archy, meekly.

"Then you better, 'fore ye discuss Brown and his mistakes again," said Brown's old follower. It was a welcome diversion to have Rachel, who had left the room for a second, return, to announce dinner. Archy managed to get near enough to her for a whisper; but she only gave him a frightened glance and said, "Please don't talk about Brown to pa until you know more. Ossie's named after him. Pa thinks the world of him!"

The meal began ominously. Archy had been praising the pretty town.

"We owe our prosperity to our liquor laws," said Mr. Meadowes. "Humph, did ye find any beer that day?"

So he had remembered! Archy, blushing in spite of himself, said, "No, he hadn't tried."

"You drink to home, I s'pose. Have wine on the table?"

Archy confessed to an occasional glass of claret with his dinner.

"Them boys," said the old man, slanting his thumb at the twins, "them boys ain't never touched a drop of spirituous liquor in their lives."

"Indeed," said Archy, trying to throw a sympathetic accent into the word.

"Yes, sir. And the majority of the boys here have the same habits. That's the great advantage of a prohibitory law; it makes a town safe to raise boys in. I wouldn't raise a family in Davenport if you gave me my home."

"But Davenport is a delightful place, don't you know, Mr. Meadowes; and in spite of their saloons, there isn't a town in Iowa with a smaller percentage of criminal business."

"All the same," Meadowes retorted, sardonically, we'll try to improve it a bit. We are goin' to pass a law that will wipe out the saloons all over Iowa. P'raps you don't believe sich a law kin be enforced?"

"Well, it never has been. Why don't you try high license?"

"Because I don't believe in compromising

with evil. That's why! I fought slavery in my youth, an' I'm fighting rum in my old age. And I've been a no-compromise man straight through. I learned that from old John Brown. There wasn't much compromising about him. It was a grand thing to see him in battle. And they say it was grander to see him die. And yet there wasn't a man was gentler or kinder-hearted. He never took no thought of himself. Look at that letter he wrote his wife from the prison, beggin' her not to come to him, 'cause it would use up all her little stock of money, and she might be insulted or hard treated. But I'm wandering. Brown's only a fanatic to you. He was not of this world, and the world martyred him, an' you compromise men stood by consenting unto his blood. You're a high-license man yourself, I take it. Believe in doing evil that good may come, hey?"

"Oh, no," said Archy, smiling. Somehow during the last few moments his thoughts had grown kinder to the loyal old partisan. "Oh, no, I merely choose between a little evil and a great deal. I'll take less than the earth. But, really, Mr. Meadowes, I haven't studied the subject enough to discuss it. Can't you ask me something easy?"

Ossie ventured to laugh. Jared frowned. "What are your politics?" said the old man, sternly.

"I am not sure that I have any. Sometimes I am a Republican, and sometimes a Democrat. I believe I was a Democrat last."

Now, in the interior of Iowa Republicanism is, still, a species of religion.

A gasp of dismay ran through the circle.

"Those are your opinions, are they?" said the old man, sternly. "A trimmer. Well. Will you have any more meat?"

Archy declined, and Mr. Meadowes only spoke to him once again during the meal. The once was when he observed Archy shredding his salad with his fork. "Ain't ye got no knife?" called he. "Lowisa" — to his red-haired maid — "give Captain Barris a knife."

"He's got a knife," the girl said sharply; "there's your knife!" — pushing the blade at Archy, who silently cut up his lettuce. But Rachel reddened up to her eyes.

The dinner was excellent. I don't know how many hours Rachel and Miss Baker had spent in the kitchen with "Lowisa." The linen was dainty, there were flowers on the table, and the cut-glass tumblers, and the carafe. Rachel had tripped out of the room with a happy smile, thinking: "Archy will see that we can have pretty things too."

But now, seen through a stranger's eyes, everything was wofully changed.

The oilcloth, to which her father clung because he had always had an oilcloth on his dining-room floor ever since he was married; that preposterous sideboard, and those portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Meadowes which a gifted sign-painter had done just before they left Kansas — did Archy notice them, was he laughing at them? Even the table appointments were not an unmixed triumph. Jared asked, where was the "water pitcher?" "Lowisa" forgot the white apron that had been furnished her. She piled the dishes noisily into dizzy towers, and it was almost an interposition of Providence that she didn't slay Mr. Meadowes outright, as she swung the meat platter above his head, with the carving-knife prancing on the edge, while he sat below, like an unconscious Damocles. It was no use trying to catch "Lowisa's" eye; her mind was on the sweets in the kitchen, and you must speak to the point, and in a good round tone, too, or she would glare at you and say, "How?" Rachel thought of Mrs. Barris's dinners, the beautiful room, the glittering table, the noiseless service. Every rough gesture of her father's was like a blow. She could have groaned when he brandished his knife at Archy, in the courage of his opinions, or mopped his face with his napkin. His blunt discourtesy was worse than anything else. "How could he? how could he?" she kept saying to herself, in a spasm of mortification. Yet, all the while, she was angry with her lover. That indefinable thrill of kindred, of the blood that is thicker than water, was sending hot flushes of mingled shame and indignant affection to her cheeks. What could Archy know of her father, of his heroic devotion to principle, his honesty, that was a proverb in the town, and how

under that harsh exterior was the tenderest, faithfullest heart — why, though he talked so fiercely about saloon-keepers, he had half supported Gus Timm's family after they sold him out and poured the barrels into the street! What did Archy know, sitting there so easily, sneering at his spiritual betters?

Meanwhile poor Archy, ignorant of this tumult of feeling, was congratulating himself on having kept his temper so well.

The dinner, at last, came to an end. Instantly Meadowes spoke to Rachel, "I want to see you a minnit, daughter."

They went out together; Ossie and Miss Baker exchanged a sorrowful glance; and Miss Baker said, "Won't you please step into the parlor, Captain Barris?" in much the same tone in which one would say, "Won't you walk into the silent tomb?"

The air had grown close and warm. Jared flung off his coat without ceremony. Ossie sat on the piano-stool making aimless half-circles of motion and looking dejected. Miss Baker essayed a few commonplaces on the late magazines; but her eyes kept wandering to the door, and Archy's best efforts at sprightliness fell flat; in fact, his listeners gazed on him more and more compassionately. It was a distinct relief, after half an hour of this, to see old Meadowes reappear. Simultaneously, as though they were puppets on a single string which he had pulled, the others jumped up and filed out of the room.

Archy felt a dismal presentiment. It was no false prophet; in the fewest and curtest sentences Meadowes told him that his proposal must be rejected. "I've looked ye over and ye wun't do," said he, "you're a drinkin' man —"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Meadowes,

I was never under the influence of liquor in my life. I don't care for the stuff."

Unconsciously Archy had squared his shoulders, he had risen on Mr. Meadowes's entrance, and was still standing. The old man looked at him — a gallant figure, erect, athletic, with his fair skin flushing, his handsome head thrown back a little, and his frank blue eyes sparkling. Old Meadowes drew an abrupt sigh. "I didn't say you got drunk," he replied; "I said you was a drinkin' man, a moderate drinker, if you like that expression better —"

"Very moderate."

"I don't take no stock in moderate drinkers; if they're too cold-blooded to go to perdition themselves, they lead other people there, and I ain't sure but that's worse. You are a Democrat and an aristocrat. Ramsay says you ain't a professor of religion — jest a sort of 'piscopal. We ain't got an opinion in common."

"I beg your pardon, we have one, your daughter —"

"That ain't the same thing, even. You think you're in love with her now, but when you find her principles interferin' with your amusements, and your fine friends are laughing at you behind your back, you'll git angry with her. I would have more hopes of ye if you'd stood up fair and square for the bad things you believe in; there'd be some chance of convertin' you to righteousness; but you're like the Lacedamonians the 'postle talks of. Ye shew what was in ye at the dinner-table. Ye didn't want no disputin'; oh, no, you was willin' to make any concessions, till ye'd got Rachel 'way; then I guess you'd sing another song. But I tell you, Captain Barris," he drew himself up to his full height, his countenance grew rigid, and he made a single downward stroke with his fore-finger. "I tell you, I'd ruther see my innocent child dead, right here, than married to a cold-hearted, unprincipled, sneerin' aristocrat that will break her heart or else ruin her principles."

"You can hardly expect me to take this as final," said Archy, coldly.

"Oh! ye kin see Rachel, if ye wanter," the old man answered. All at once he looked desperately tired and spoke wearily, quite without anger, "It will be an additional pain to her; but you've both got it to go through, and ye kin talk it over together. I'll call her. Good-by, Captain Barris. I expect ye wun't care for it, but I'm sorry for you." He extended his hand. Archy felt the same odd movement of friendliness for the stanch old soul which he had felt before, struggling up to the surface of his sensations through all the anger and sting of the moment.

"No, Mr. Meadowes," said he, "I

can't shake hands, for I mean to do my best to persuade your daughter to marry me."

"Try," said the old man, stonily, walking off.

Then Rachel came. She looked white and miserable and had a package in her hands. Archy would not look at her face; he caught her in his arms, whispering, "You won't be so cruel, my love, it's nonsense my giving you up — I can't!"

"You must," said Rachel, trembling, but trying to release herself; "please let me go, Captain Barris."

The young man stepped back rather an exaggerated distance. He looked at her steadily. "You don't mean that you will throw me over like this," said he.

Rachel made a great effort and controlled her voice. It was just the soft, caressing, plaintive voice that one would expect of her; but now it was on that level of intonation which comes when the will has to hold every word steady lest it turn into a sob. "My father," said she, "it's all true what my father says; we are altogether different. The people you go with laugh at the things I have been taught were the most important. They call earnest Christian people 'prigs'; and your mother was so surprised when I told her I belonged to the W. C. T. U., and said, 'Oh, my dear, don't; that sort of thing stamps one!' She made me feel as though I had confessed to having been in jail. Captain Barris, your mother is ashamed of me. And you would be if you married me. You are ashamed of my folks —" She choked with the remembrance of the torture of the dinner-table.

Archy looked at her in a confusion of anger, pity, and despair. "But, Rachel," he cried, vehemently, "you knew all about this before, when you promised to marry me. What does all this r — stuff matter when we love each other? Come, my darling, when you know us better you will find we have our principles, too, though we may seem to make light of them."

"They are different; everything is different. I was afraid always, but I — You hadn't seen my father, then; I told you if he consented. But he would be wretched —"

"You would rather make me wretched than him?"

Rachel was standing; she sat down before she answered, faintly, "Yes."

"Then," said he, "when you told me that last evening on the island that you —"

"Please don't," she whispered; and she said aloud, "Jared!"

Archy did not know that she felt herself fainting, and her cry to her brother, passing by the door, was only because of this. He thought that she wanted to cut the interview short. He was stung to the quick.

He caught up his hat and bowed. "In that case," said he, "I will not prolong an interview that seems to distress you. I wish you every good fortune, Miss Meadowes."

Not daring to raise her eyes she dizzily lifted the package in her lap. But he had turned his back. The poor girl had put a few tear-stained words between the lids of her Bible, and placed it with his notes and the trifling gifts which she had allowed him to give her; the little bundle slipped from her limp fingers, and, just as Archy's footsteps pounded along the walk, Rachel's head sank on her brother's arm in the first swoon of her life.

Archy went striding down the street. Well, to this day he has a little tightening of the throat recalling the next few hours. He was in a fever of wrath and anguish; furious with Rachel, who could give him up so tamely, raving at himself for flinging up his chance in a fit of temper. Then he essayed a cynical gayety, and felt his eyes smarting with tears because he had remembered some trumpery incident of the past weeks and the cadence of Rachel's laugh. Ah! haven't the most of us just such moments to remember, with their sickening oscillations of love and anger and despair! How long Archy walked he could not tell, but when he resumed a saner mood enough to look about him, he was among the low hills, covered with wheat and oats, outside the town, and night was falling. Clever alienists have their patients walked to exhaustion sometimes, and perhaps lovers, who are in a measure insane people, may be helped the same way. At any rate, by this time Archy's sweet temper

had acquitted Rachel. He even had a glimmer of the truth, and he began to hope again.

He turned himself about, resolved to walk past the Meadowes' house. He would not call, but if by accident —

As he passed through the College campus he heard a girl's laugh.

"See how funny the sky looks!" she said to the young man beside her. "Look — you are not looking at all!"

"I have something better to look at," said he.

Archy brushed past them impatiently. Yet it was a strange sky. Although the sun had set, the western sky, up to the zenith, burned with a lurid radiance. Funnel-shaped clouds, inky black, dipped into this unearthly brilliancy. While Archy looked he became aware of the utter stillness of the air. Not a bird's chirp, not the hum of an insect. He had a peculiarly ghastly sensation, like one who feels for a pulse and there is no throb. "What a cursed night!" he muttered. It was the night of the 17th of June, 1882. He went on. He passed the Meadowes house.

Then he turned, saying to himself that he would go to his hotel and write to Rachel; he even remembered that he had missed his supper, — when he saw Rachel come out of the house. It was too dark to see her face, but he knew her figure and a certain blue shawl which she used to wear. Afire now with hope and impatience he pursued her. Suddenly that dear form grew dim. The strange light was fading, the black funnels dipped lower, lower into the glow, and the dark tree-leaves began to rustle. Directly, the air vibrated with a horrible grinding noise, compared, afterward, to many sounds, like them all, yet most appallingly different from all. And then — it came! Earth and air were rent into chaos. The tall trees swayed, snapped, fell. Houses were swept from their moorings, and whirled shivering and crashing away. They were chopped into splinters. They were scattered like a handful of dust. There was no more space; the air itself was a tumult of darting shapes, a horror of woful sounds. Archy was within arm's length of Rachel. He caught her waist; he flung her, or they were thrown together, against the roots of a great elm. "Cling!" he shouted; "lie flat and hold on for your life!"

Her head and shoulders being in a hollow of the roots were partially protected, and he could further shield them with his own body. He felt the wind of death swaying their limbs; he was struck heavy blows, he was flogged, battered, stung; his tense muscles were ready to snap with the strain, but he clung with the immense energy of despair. The cyclone shot a hundred objects over his head — rafters, branches, the marble top of a table, a beast with hoofs and horns, the pillows of a bed — there was no counting them. A house to his right was smashed like an egg-shell; a row of houses to his left fell in amid frightful screams. Balls of fire were skimming the ground. A girl's face, the face that he had seen a moment since, flashed by all white and crooked, and vanished. Not a rod away a man ran toward them, screaming. The wind took him and he was gone. Somewhere among the trees a piteous little voice cried, "Mamma, tum! mamma, tum!" Back of him were some people in sore plight who groaned unceasingly, and a woman shrieked, "Oh! my baby." The storm went roaring over them, houses, barns, trees hurled on either side of its track. It struck the College, levelled the brick building like a house of cards, peeled roof and upper story off the stone building, and flung a shower of blinds, glass, shingles, and bricks from the professors' houses.

But surely now the worst was over; they could lie still on the ground, and the voices about them were plainer.

"It's over, thank God!" cried a man's voice.

"Well, it's finished me anyhow," another answered; "my legs are both broke, and my back too, I guess. Anybody got any legs to get up and look after that woman's baby?"

The cyclone had gone; but the wind in its wake was blowing furiously and the rain fell as rain never fell in Grinnell before; in fact, a water-spout had burst. One could scarcely stand for the wind or breathe for the rain. And the darkness was horrible.

Archy managed to get on his feet and to raise Rachel. She held on to his arm,

sobbing, "Oh! my land! Oh! who is it? What has become of them? Oh! Captain Barris, what has happened?"

It was not Rachel's voice.

At that moment the heavens blazed from horizon to horizon, while a clap of thunder drowned the multitudinous din of human agony. Who that saw it can forget that woful battle-field, struck into sight, then swallowed up in blackness — wreck and carnage such as can-not be pictured, and white faces glaring out of their death-traps. Yet Archy could only see one object, Miss Baker's terrified face. "For God's sake, where's Rachel?" he groaned.

"In the house, and he — he — Oh! look; oh! look!"

Through the sheet of rain, as the lightning flashed again, they both looked. The house was gone.

Miss Baker showed herself the stronger of the two now; it was she who suggested that they might have reached the cellar.

"Let us go," said Archy; "but I can't leave that baby up in the tree. Wait a moment!"

The little captive luckily was so wedged in the branches (held fast by his frock, which was torn in two and rolled round a limb as though the cyclone had deliberately tied him), that he was merely bruised a little, and easily released by the simple expedient (suggested by Miss Baker) of cutting off the buttons and pulling him out of the dress. Archy stumbled across to the cellar, and at the first sound of the child's voice a woman caught him and wept over him. She said that they were all out of the cellar. Only one was badly hurt, and he was calling to them to leave him and go to others who could be helped.

"I wish we could stay," said Miss Baker; "but we must go on, Mrs. Dane. Our house is gone. And Rachel and Mr. Meadowes —"

"Oh! God help you," said the woman, go, do go!"

Though they used all possible speed they had to go slowly, the ground being full of great holes where trees had been uprooted or fence-posts torn out, and encumbered, moreover, with the trunks of trees, and rafters and piles of brick, and splintered furniture of every kind and shape. Once Archy stumbled over a dead horse, very comfortably disposed on a feather-bed. His next stumble banged his knees against a kitchen stove.

A second later a lantern was flashed in their eyes, and a wild-faced man shouted, "Is Thomas Reynolds's house down?"

They could not tell him, and he ran by with his wild face behind his lantern. Somehow, this increased their anxiety. Indeed there was something very ghastly and awful about the way they would be suddenly close to a fellow-creature in dire misery, and, in the space of a thought, he would be gone, and the rain and the blackness about them again. During all this while, also, there was no diminution of the uproar of shrieks, yells, groans; rather its volume was swelled by new voices, because helpers were seeking for the wounded and the dead, and shouted their presence. Lanterns now twinkled in every direction. The men of Grinnell were very generally in the business streets when the cyclone came, and this part of the town had escaped. They heard the storm and saw it break. As soon as they could stand in the gale they were out with lanterns. A second and a third man passed Archy. The fourth man wrested Miss Baker from his arm, crying, "God be praised! Here, hold these," he said, thrusting an axe and lantern at Archy. The action, it appeared, was to free his arms, that he might embrace Miss Baker, which he did most tenderly. Of course it was old Jared Meadowes.

"Rachel?" gasped Archy.

"Rachel's all right, safe and sound, thank God," Meadowes replied; "we got into the cellar. But you, Lida —"

"I should have been killed but for Captain Barris," said she, solemnly; "I never could have held on but for him."

The old man wrung Archy's wrist; he couldn't wring his hand, since the right held the lantern and the left the axe.

"She's to be my wife," said he, hoarsely. "I thought I'd lost her."

He made no other attempt at thanks, seeming to think that sentence explained everything. "But my boys, Lida," he continued, "they're both up to the College. I must go to them. Kin you take her home?"

"Nobody need take me home," said Miss Baker, who had acted with unexpected spirit and coolness all along. "I know every step of the way, and I ain't a mite hurt. You both go along; you are needed here, and I don't need you. You only hinder me; I cayn't hold up my dress or nothing, getting over the logs, with you 'round!"

She would not even take the lantern, protesting that they would need it in their work, which was so much the case that they did not insist; and so they parted. The two men turned back to the College. They had not proceeded very far before Meadowes began to swing his lantern, yelling, "Hello, Ossie! This way!"

A young fellow, bounding recklessly over the logs, stopped with a cry of joy; palpably Ossie. He explained hurriedly that there were five students under the ruins of the brick building, and at least three buried under the roof of Central College. He himself had leaped out of a window as he felt the building lurch. He was bruised and cut, but he came down all right by the bell. Jared's leg was hurt. Ossie got him out somehow, and he was picking bricks off the other boys; he said that he could do that, since his arms were sound. Ossie must get help and find out about the family. "Run on, my boy," said the father. He looked in an appealing way at Archy. "I guess his eye ain't out, don't you? It's only the eyelid got tore, ain't it? I wouldn't stop him to ask."

"It was only the eyelid. I could see plainly."

The old man drew a deep sigh of relief. "Come on," said he, "you've got mighty good eyes."

Then ensued a night, the most terrible, the most pitiful, and the most noble in Grinnell's history. Well had it been named a colony of Puritans; for that night, amid desolation and horror, these plain people rose to the stature of heroes. Fortitude, serenity in danger, courage, good sense, magnanimous civic devotion, all the rugged virtues of the Puritan were there, and with them an open-handed generosity and a jocose philosophy born of the prairie air.

Archy and old Meadowes worked side by side the night through. They worked amid scenes so awful and so piteous that all the disguises in which we Anglo-Saxons like to muffle up our hearts were torn away.

Archy was prepared to find the old John Brown man a cool, long-headed fellow, brave and patient, in fine, a good comrade; but he did not expect to see him as gentle as a woman with the wounded, and he opened his eyes over the sum which the old man put down on the first subscription paper. "It's a thank-offering to the Lord," said he, solemnly, "for his mercies to me this night."

The two men had worked in the greatest harmony. Indeed, if anything could have amused Archy during those dreadful hours he would have been amused to observe how Meadowes presently came to rely on his quick eyes and strong muscles. Several times the old man jerked a gruff word of approval at the younger one. Finally, he tapped him on the shoulder, saying, "Had 'bout 'nuff of this, ain't ye? I've jest got word from Rachel that our barn's all safe, and she an' Lida have got an oil-stove up, and some hot biscuits and coffee and cold ham ready. It's broad daylight, an' I guess we better quit for awhile. Jared's there; I'd kinder like to see how his leg's comin' on. An' Lida's waitin' to thank you." His tone changed to one of grave and deep feeling. "I ain't rightly thanked ye for that yet, myself," said he.

Now, several times during the last hours it had occurred to Archy that he was sailing into the old man's favor under false colors. There is a well-defined difference between risking your life for another man's sweetheart and for your own.

It was a temptation; he could see Rachel, and the barn, and the steam of the coffee, and the turn of her white throat as she would look up, and her brown eyes shining. Then he said, sulkily, "That's nothing; I — I ought to tell you I mistook Miss Baker for Rachel."

Meadowes's lips twitched with a grin of humorous appreciation. Though a Puritan, he was also a Westerner.

"I'll bet a cooky you've been on pins and needles," said he, "thinking whether you had ought to tell me, or could git

off without." His face softened. "Lida does feature Rachel, an' they've got the same way of walkin'. 'Twas that first turned my mind on her." He hesitated. "I guess you'd have done 'bout the same if you had known."

"Of course," said Archy, indignantly.

"Then I don't see but what the obligation's just where it was. I'm glad ye spoke, though; glad ye wouldn't take gratitude ye thought didn't b'long to ye. My main objection to you, Barris, was your bein' so unprincipled; but I guess you've got a conscience, though it's considerable darkened. You've shown yourself a man to-night. I mistrusted you hadn't much of a heart either; but when I saw you cryin' over that poor little blinded baby tryin' to make its dead mother hear, an' wipin' your eyes on the sly with your fists, not knowin' you was leavin' a black mark every time — oh, ye needn't go to rubbin' your face! Bless you, man, you're mud and soot all over, and your coat's bu'st down the back. Your own mother wouldn't know you! But I guess Rachel will. Come along, come along. You and she will just have to settle your concerns yourselves."

It does not need telling that this settlement was satisfactory. Only it was embarrassing that the old man would not let him go to the hotel or give him time for the rudest toilet.

But Rachel threw her white arms about that dreadful coat with a sob of happiness.

"And you won't send me away again?" he whispered. "We are to settle it ourselves, your father says. He and I are great chums. Though I must admit," he added, "it took a cyclone to make us so."